Original subtitles

- Thank God, I'm free.

I don't have to worry about problem no more.

It's all over.

(laughing) I'm so glad.

Yeah.

Yeah, man I feel good.

Very glad.

- [Newscaster] Shortly after this photograph

was taken at the funeral,

deputies arrested their father,

33 year old James Richardson for murder,

he's serving a life term.

- I think he's very guilty,

I think he was proven guilty and I think,

I know that the finding of the trial court

was sustained unanimously by the Supreme Court

and I don't know why people won't accept it.

- It was very hard for men to suffer

and knowing that you're innocent

and losing everything you've got.

What will be the next step for me?

- [Peter] There are many pieces to this puzzle.

(cheering)

- [James] Richardson released: "I feel fine.", he said.

That is great.

- [Peter] There were many lies, many omissions.

Hidden depositions and documents.

They were all in different places

and all in different people's heads.

- When people leave jail, it is usually said

that they have paid their debt to society,

but in this case, how on earth

can society pay its debt to James Richardson,

for 20 years of anguish and pain?

- [Geraldine] Sometimes the system works

and sometimes it is flawed and so,

I think in the case of James Joseph Richardson,

it was flawed.

(gentle instrumental music)

(upbeat instrumental music)

- James Richardson was a typical migrant worker

of those days.

- He worked in the groves, he and his wife,

both picked tangerines, oranges, you name it.

That's what they did to survive.

- [Peter] The entire citrus industry was

filled with migrant workers.

- [Tim] At the time this was 1967 in Arcadia.

- Those small towns back in those days

were just like the classic small towns

that you hear about in Alabama and Texas,

and these other places where people were getting lynched

and where they had their own laws.

He was a black man, married to Annie May Richardson,

they had seven children.

- [Tim] Some of em were Annie May's

and they had James Junior.

- He seemed to be just a quiet simple person.

- The whole thing happened one day,

I think it was something on in October, in 1967.

- [Peter] It was October 25th,

it was like every other morning.

They left early, he and his wife,

to jump on a migrant bus that took them way out

into the fields to pick.

- [James] It was about 14 miles from town.

- [Peter] Before they left, just like every morning,

the mother would leave the breakfast for the children.

- [Tim] At that time the children

were fed by the babysitter,

the lady that lived next door in the duplex, Betsy Rees.

- [Peter] The babysitter, because there were two children

that were too young to go to school.

- We trusted her, because she had some children,

we were right next door to one another.

- And Betsy Rees would feed them

and sometimes she had her own grandchildren,

would eat, the families would eat together.

That day, they did not.

- The babysitter prepared it, fried it,

did whatever they do to it and served it to the children.

All seven of the children ate it,

five of them left and walked to school.

- And they started to, basically, foam at the mouth.

- If you can imagine the scene, think of a movie like this,

where in five different rooms,

teachers are running around carrying a child,

like, what's going on, what's going on?

They figured, oh my god, what about the kids at home?

- The teachers took action and they went to the house

because they knew they had younger siblings

that weren't of school age

and those children were also found in the same condition.

- They rushed over to the home and there's Betsy Rees

holding one dead kid in her arms

and the other kid"s lying on the ground convulsing.

Word was sent out to the field.

- They took our sacks and things

and threw them up on the truck.

- At that time, James and of course, Annie May

were called back and they were taken to the hospital.

- And they brought Richardson and his wife in,

would not tell them what was going on,

took them right into the hospital

and then into the chapel, made them start praying,

even before they told them like,

what's going on, where are my kids?

They wouldn't even answer the question.

- They called the minister and he took us into the room

and he said, "Let us pray."

I said, "Pray for what?"

And then he took the sheriff and said, "You tell him."

And the sheriff said, no, "I'm gonna let y'all tell him."

The man spoke out and said,

"James, all your children are dead."

(gentle instrumental music)

- People in the town got together, the churches,

whatever, and raised enough money to bury these kids.

They had a huge funeral at the gymnasium,

where all seven caskets were laid out and of course,

those pictures went nationwide,

went all over the world.

You know, seven caskets lined up,

that's a pretty dramatic photo.

And they are in a certain section of the Arcadia,

old Arcadia graveyard, there's a plot there

with the seven graves.

- At that time the police weren't sure what happened,

but poisoning was suspected,

based on the foaming at the mouth, things like that.

The smell of Parathion was very heavy in the house,

those were the sheriff's words.

- [Newscaster] What killed them?

Parathion, an extremely poisonous insecticide.

Parathion powder, lots of it,

was mixed into their last meal.

- Well, Parathion was a commonly used insecticide,

used back in those days, it was eventually banned from use.

It was horrible, just a little tiny,

less than half a spoonful, would make you violently sick,

any more than that and it would kill you.

- When they brought them in through the door,

little things, just hands and arms drawn up,

just gripping, foaming at the mouth.

They couldn't cry out in anguish, real loud or nothing,

because with your body contracting like it was,

you just can't do it.

- It's a horrible, horrible thing,

those kids died a horrible death.

And the sheriff went in there

and they ransacked the house,

looking for anything they could.

- [James] They couldn't find nothin'.

The stuff wasn't even there.

- They couldn't find it, but they found a business card

from an insurance agent and on the back of the card,

it was $500 upon the death of each child.

- It took off from there,

where he became a suspect because an insurance man

just happened to be walking through the neighborhood

the night before, saw the light on

and went to see if he could sell some insurance.

- They used that card and a few other things,

a bag of parathion magically appeared in a shed

behind his house the day after.

- Betsy Rees and Charlie,

I can't remember his last name, he was

I guess the, kind of the town drunk,

somehow they found a bag of Parathion in the shed,

that the sheriff had already searched twice.

That's what the sheriff basically used,

saying that he had bought insurance the night before

and then poisoned his kids.

That was Frank Kline, was the sheriff.

He actually got an award from Detective Magazine

for his work on the case and I kind of find that ironic,

since I don't think he really did that much

of an investigation.

- [Newscaster] Richardson was first arrested

on a child neglect charge, immediately after the deaths,

but three months later in January of '68,

the state still did not have a solid murder case.

- James Richardson was in jail originally

a short amount of time, it might have been two weeks

before he was granted bail.

So after he left jail they went in there

and talked to all the prisoners,

saying, did this guy say anything?

And they ran into four or five guys

that claimed that he had made statements

to the effect of, oh I'm just trying,

I've got to get out from under all this,

that he was having marital trouble.

- This guy, Ernell Washington,

he was telling the sheriff,

you scratch my back and I'll scratch your back

and one thing from the other.

- [Peter] Even some of these, he even gave,

claimed that James Richardson told him how he did it,

that he put the Parathion in,

it was already in the pot before she started to cook it.

- Without those statements, those jailhouse confessions,

he would had a weak case.

- And once that happened, of course,

they went and picked him up and put him in jail

and then they prepared their case, over a couple months.

- Subsequently he was put through the system.

A lawyer from Daytona Beach, John Robinson,

agreed to represent him.

- They gave him a couple of names for a public defender

and he picked John Robinson

'cause his name was close to Richardson.

That's all he knew about it.

They decided that that he should

be charged with first degree murder,

which meant death penalty and then they had a trial.

- [Tim] Frank Shaub was the prosecutor.

He had recently been the prosecutor

in the Carl Coppolino case in Tampa.

- [Peter] And so he was well known for that.

He beat F. Lee Bailey in that case,

that's why I say Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig,

whatever, he was, he was the man.

- This was the next big case that came up

and he was the prosecutor for that section and yes,

he was interested in finding the killer of seven children.

- [Newscaster] The trial began May 27th.

Jurors heard of Richardson's alleged confession.

- And these guys were all given days off of their sentences,

that's part of the record,

in return for their testimony against Richardson.

- [Interviewee] These two out here, Cunningham and Weaver,

would do anything the sheriff would ask them to do.

- [Interviewer] Even lie?

- Even lie.

They did.

- What happens with a jailhouse snitch ordinarily is

that they're given some kind of a deal, you know.

Certainly that deal should be made known to a jury,

but sometimes those deals are hidden.

- This witness, James Ernell Washington,

they come down, take a statement

and he gets some deal cut, he gets out.

But even in that statement, he tells them for pages,

oh yeah, I asked Richardson, who he think did it,

oh, I think the babysitter did it.

- She was no more a suspect than you.

I mean, what do we have to suspect her for?

- Even more interesting is the fact that Mrs. Rees

was once accused of poisoning one of her husbands

and served prison time for murdering another.

She was also reportedly mad at the Richardson family

because another husband left her

for one of the Richardson cousins.

- Well, in her background, yeah, that's the crazy thing,

there's a husband that died of poisoning,

but she was never convicted of it.

And then a couple years later,

a second husband died, she shot him to death.

And I guess maybe it must have stunned James Richardson,

because part of the issue in this trial was

that he never seemed to show any feeling

about what happened.

He didn't sit there screaming and crying

and pounding the wall, he seemed calm

that seemed odd to everybody, you know.

- [Newscaster] Four days of testimony.

Reporters from national publications

and TV networks gave the trial nationwide notoriety.

- It wasn't that long, it wasn't even a week.

The jury, after that, once it was over with,

the jury, I believe, only deliberated for two hours.

They came back with a guilty verdict

and he was sentenced to death.

- I wondered what was happening.

It was just bad.

- But the fact that he was black,

can't deny that he had no friends,

he was in a court room,

he was the only black man in the court room.

- It was twelve white jurors and a white judge.

And this was a poor African-American fruit picker

who was the defendant.

And seven children were dead

and somebody had to answer for that.

- I don't think he had any confidence at all.

He fell into that black hole, that's it for me, you know.

- He was given the death sentence

he was sent to Raiford prison, North Florida,

where he spent from '68 to '73,

if my memory's correct, on death row.

- That was back in the days on death row,

when they gave every prisoner that came in,

was given a dry run to show em

what was going to happen someday.

- [Tim] I believe that was part of the practice was,

you know, it was used to keep the inmate calm,

to try and keep them calm so

that they understood what was going to happen

and it wasn't a surprise to them.

- [Man] About five o'clock in the morning,

he's brought out, where he is shaved,

his head head is shaved and his right leg is shaved

and then he is brought through this door,

which proceeds down a corridor,

which goes to where the electric chair is.

- I remember his telling us

that they had gone so far as to shave his head,

in preparation for it.

- They took the machine, running up and down my hand,

and they put it all up and down here

and under my arms and my leg.

- [Man] He's brought in and put into the chair

and the strap are placed around his chest

and around his lap and on his arms.

- [Peter] So they brought him in there,

shaved his head, hooked him up as if

it was really going to happen and then turned it off

and let him go back to his cell.

- The Supreme Court declared

the death penalty unconstitutional today

and spared the lives of 600 men

in death row cells across the country.

But the divergent opinions

offered by the justices leave some questions

about capital punishment still unanswered.

- He said the death penalty

has been imposed disproportionately on minority groups.

More than half of the 600 people

now under death sentence are black.

- But for the U.S. Supreme Court in Furman versus Georgia,

overturning everybody's death penalty in the United States,

Mr. Richardson would have been executed.

- All the death row inmates

were then put into life sentences, 25 years

and also the ability to have parole.

Basically, he was denied parole

because he didn't show any remorse,

which, if he didn't do it, how could he have remorse

for something he didn't do, you know?

I don't think he was capable of being an actor.

- It very hard for a man, to suffer and knowing

that you're innocent and losing everything you've got.

What will be the next step for me?

- [Peter] Although we talked to experts in grief

at the University of Miami and other places

that told us within different ways,

the worse the tragedy is,

that his reaction was not uncommon.

- And I believe Frank Schaub,

the prosecutor, was always there also,

because you have to remember

that James was only convicted of the oldest daughter's death

and supposedly Frank Schaub had said,

or was quoted as saying,

"If we don't get him on the first one,

"well, we got six more tries."

- He made it known to Richardson that he would,

the minute he walked out,

he would charge him with murder for the other child

and we'll do the whole thing over again.

- [Tim] That was kind of the thought process,

I believe, at the time.

- But see, he had to fight it because his reputation

and his whole sterling career,

the man that beat F. Lee Bailey, you know,

back then that was a big deal,

especially in little Arcadia, it was on the line.

- And Frank Schaub, I believe that too,

he believed in his heart that he had the right guy.

Why else would he go attend parole hearings?

To make sure that he stayed in prison.

- I think he's very guilty, I think he was proven guilty.

The finding of the trial court

was sustained unanimously by the Supreme Court

and I don't know why people won't accept it.

- It's very hard to explain to you

what was it like to suffer with pain

running up and down my spine, all night, all day.

Wondering what's going to take place next.

- [Tim] He then moved through the prison system,

located at different facilities, Marion Correctional,

I believe was one of them.

He ended up at Tomoka Correctional

in Daytona Beach, Florida,

which is like a medium-security type prison,

which is where he earned his GED,

he was very active in the prison ministry.

- [Peter] And over the years, once in a while,

somebody would mention the case, there'd be an anniversary,

there'd be a little story.

There was nothing going on.

(wind howling)

- I just don't know what to say about it.

But I'm still hoping, someday, that I will be free.

And God enables me to go and start a new life.

- And it was in, I think it was '88

- [Announcer] Tampa, St. Petersburg.

This is Pulse 13: Night Beat,

Tampa Bay's most-watched night-time newscast.

- More than 20 years ago,

a black man, James Joseph Richardson,

was convicted of poisoning to death

his seven children in Arcadia.

His trial drew national attention,

many people claiming he was railroaded

into that death sentence.

There is now new evidence

that may show James Richardson is innocent.

- [Newscaster] During the 1968 trial,

prosecutors said Richardson gave a powerful insecticide

to his six girls and one boy in order to collect insurance.

But attorneys now say the original prosecutor knew

the children were never insured

and that a former babysitter,

now confined to this nursing home,

has confessed to poisoning the children.

- Betsy Rees, the next door neighbor,

who I believe probably was the one

who put the poison in there,

but she's now in a nursing home,

early signs of dementia, Alzheimer's,

but this young lady says, "I remember her

"because of that case."

And now she sits there in the chair, rocking,

"I killed those kids, I killed those kids."

- And I will ask her,

I say "Betsy, did you kill those children?"

and she say, "Yeah, I did it."

and I said, "Why?"

and then she would bust out into tears

and she would start crying.

- [Interviewer] How do you know that she knew

what you were talking about?

- A person like that wasn't incompetent,

so I felt like she knew what she was saying.

- Now that was it, I was like amazed.

I got back, did all the research I could.

The hook of the story was the lady making that statement,

it gives you an excuse, a lead,

to go in and do a recap of the story.

Just a recap of what happened.

It is a very interesting story

whether the man's guilty or not,

especially if you can find out, why did he do it?

We published a huge story in

the Miami Herald's Tropic Magazine.

The title was Poisoned Justice,

which I've always thought was a perfect title for this.

Poisoned Justice.

- I knew about this having read the Tropic article

and I think there were a great number of folks,

probably outside of Arcadia,

who once they read the article kind of

realized this man probably got a raw deal.

- We covered that thing well over a year or so.

It floated around out there

and no matter how much evidence

we could drum up to show

that this was what was going on,

the Arcadia syndrome still kept on.

- This is an election year,

and I don't want to get involved.

(static)

- [Newscaster] James Joseph Richardson

has spent these last 21 years

locked up for killing his own kids,

but now his lawyers say there is information

newly available to them.

(gentle instrumental music)

- [Tim] The Assistant State Attorney Reg Treadwell,

who was an assistant to Frank Schaub,

had some evidence that was,

it was withheld from the defense.

- He had em in a big box in a drawer in his desk.

- [Tim] I believe he was getting ready

to throw the evidence out

and his secretary knew what that box contained

and she gave a key to her boyfriend, I believe, at the time.

- Remus Griffin.

He's from a wealthy family,

so he didn't really have to work.

He'd been in and out of jail on minor things,

and had skills to be a thief, a burglar.

He broke in there and grabbed that box,

took it home and started looking through it.

- To me, it would be no different

than turning in a lost set of car keys,

a lost wallet or helping someone change a flat tire

or holding a door open for someone.

It was just, to me, it was no big deal.

- [Peter] These were depositions

that they never showed the other side,

notes from the grand jury proceedings,

all kinds of different things.

- [Tim] I believe it was passed around.

Mark Lane, a lawyer and journalist, found out about it.

- The file's amazing, it's the anatomy of the frame-up.

It shows how Cline, Schaub, and Treadwell together

manipulated the evidence and the facts

to frame a man they knew to be innocent.

- [Peter] Yeah, he wrote the book, Arcadia about the case.

- [Tim] The story of the case

and what happened in that time.

- [Peter] And he wanted to become Richardson's attorney.

- It's a good thing to put a man

in prison for murder, if he's guilty.

In this case, sheriff Cline got the wrong man.

(cheering and applauding)

- But Ellis Reuben, from Miami, took the case.

- Both of these gentlemen never met a camera

or a microphone they didn't like.

- Would you ever handle a case that wasn't high publicity?

- Sandy, I handle about 200 cases at any one time.

You only hear about three or four.

- [Tim] Anyways, Lane eventually got the evidence

to the governor's office.

- [Peter] It wasn't long after that,

the governor announced that he wanted to look into the case.

- There were seven deaths and we can't forget that,

seven little ones died and someone was found guilty.

If there was a wrongdoing at that time,

we would like to know about it.

Justice ought to prevail.

- [Tim] The governor, who was Bob Martinez at the time,

appointed Janet Reno, who at that time

was the Miami-Dade state's attorney.

She was given that power to investigate

and find out if he, in fact,

was given a fair trial and the story behind it.

- She was the special prosecuting attorney

and so, she was able walk right into the Arcadia Courthouse

and say, give me everything on Richardson

they could not hold anything back.

- As a prosecutor in Dade County,

I can be sure of guilt to the extent

that a human being can be.

I can make sure that it was not

discriminatorily applied in any way.

I can try to do everything I could to make sure

that due process was fully adhered to

and that there are things that my government does

that I sometimes do not agree with.

- [Tim] And her assistant Don Horn.

- I guess I became the lead grunt worker on it,

so trips back and forth to Arcadia to speak with witnesses,

to meet witnesses, to find other evidence.

- And investigating, following the sheriff's investigation,

they went through and the witnesses they could interview,

come to find out and believe that the charges were false,

that they were the jailhouse confession

that James is accused of confessing

to several inmates in jail

that he had killed his kids.

Those people were shown to have been prompted

by the sheriff.

- There was sufficient information in there

that said to us, yes, this is disconcerting,

yes, it's apparent to us in what we've reviewed

that he did not get a fair trial,

in large part because of what the state did and yes,

we think this is sufficient to get this before the court.

- [Tim] So they had a hearing in Arcadia.

- [Reporter] Mr. Schaub, why did you decide

to prosecute this case?

- [Frank] When?

- [Reporter] Why?

- Because the man is obviously guilty.

- [Peter] It just, it was a gripping situation,

it was torn between the old days of Arcadia

and the new days that were coming in.

- This case will illustrate

what racism was in Florida in 1967

and now we're going to see what it is in 1989.

- [Don] We went up there and you had Frank Schaub,

Treadwell, Ellis Reuben, Mark Lane, Janet Reno, myself.

- [Newscaster] Sympathies in the packed courtroom.

Famed defense attorney, author,

and Kennedy assassination prober,

Mark Lane minced no words in condemning the prosecution

in Richardson's 1968 murder trial.

- That record presented to the jury

and subsequently to the highest court of the state

was skewered at the outset by the prosecutors

and by those who work for them,

including the sheriff of this county.

- And so, Mr. Richardson's there, his wife's there,

and we're just standing around waiting

to see what the judge is going to do.

- It was a very, very gripping situation

at the end there,

he granted Richardson his immediate freedom,

let him walk right out of that courtroom.

(applauding)

And people were applauding.

(crowd cheering)

- [Woman] James Richardson.

- I wanna thank you all for being with me

and for feeling the need, feeling the love

that we have shared towards one another.

- Thank you, thank you.

God bless every last one of you.

- [Peter] It's one of the biggest things

that ever happened in Arcadia.

He got in a car and left

and didn't come back for many, many, many, many years.

(gentle instrumental music)

- Thank God, I'm free.

I don't have to worry about that problem no more.

It's all over.

I'm so glad, yeah.

(laughing and applauding)

Yeah, man, I'm feeling good.

- The greatest thing I ever did as a lawyer,

was as a prosecutor,

get somebody out of prison, Mr. Richardson.

And so, that is, even 32 years

I've been practicing now,

the most significant accomplishment

I have ever made, as an attorney.

- Richardson released: "I feel fine.", he said.

That is great.

- [Newscaster] He looks better

than we've ever seen him before,

that's what a night of freedom will do.

James Richardson told us this morning,

he is thrilled now, to be a free man.

- Well, at the time he was released,

Mark Lane was his attorney.

- [Newscaster] He spent this morning

walking the beach at Daytona, feeling the sand,

seeing sights and hearing sounds

he hasn't heard in 21 years.

- [Peter] I know that Mark Lane had him for a little while,

they were gonna try to make him...

what were they going to do, Charles?

Make him shake people's hands in Las Vegas?

Yeah.

- [Newscaster] Ironically, Richardson has gone

from life in prison to lifestyles of the rich and famous,

staying with Mark Lane, one of his attorneys,

in Lane's luxurious beachfront condo.

- They took James to, I believe to New York,

he went to Chicago.

He was supposedly on the Oprah Winfrey Show

back in the '80s.

- I go to Chicago tonight or tomorrow?

Tomorrow?

Oh, wow, that will be good.

And then where do we go from there?

It was a little bit exciting for me.

To be free again.

And even though I will never forget the tragedy,

the heartaches, the troubled times,

but I still hope for a better tomorrow.

- He was on Inside Edition.

He went to, I believe New York, for Geraldo.

- To hell and back is an expression

that applies directly to our studio guest,

an old friend James Richardson.

How is life, James?

How are you getting along?

- Life is wonderful and sweet.

- [Geraldo] What are doing these days?

- Today, I sit back, look at the television

and I entertain my wife, my new wife.

We were married just a few weeks ago.

- [Geraldo] Congratulations.

- She is very wonderful to me and she's helping me.

(applauding)

- [Tim] And there was always a movie deal around the corner.

It was always, we're working on it, James,

we've got, we're in talks with Louis Gossett Jr.

to play you and all this stuff and they fed him that line,

I don't know how many times.

- [James] They had keep me on the move,

they kept me on the go, from town to town.

- I don't believe he was paid.

There's different views on that, but he wasn't,

he didn't see any money.

- [Peter] And nothing ever happened, no book, no movies.

- Didn't have a house when I got out, they promised me

that they were going to do so much and things.

- When he got out of prison, he had nothing,

he had zero, you know.

Might of had two dollars in his canteen.

- Everybody even under the best of circumstances

with the most supportive family

and even with some kind of compensation

is gonna have difficulty reintegrating.

All your loved ones and family,

they've moved on with their lives,

it's very hard to fit back in.

You've lost so much, it's almost incalculable.

- [James] They treated me like I wasn't nobody,

giving me nothing to live on,

they give me nothing to provide for myself.

I was just out there, in the world, just alone.

- And so, he left and went back to Jacksonville

and that's when my dad would would go up

and see him on a regular basis

and of course, he didn't have any money.

- [Peter] Jim Edmonds, he's a very, very, very good man

and he met James Richardson through the chaplain

there at the prison.

- After my father passed away,

James asked me if we could help him,

you know, with rent money, things like that.

- [Peter] The Edman's family

has provided refuge for James Richardson.

- They help me with my rent, help me with the groceries,

and they help buy me shoes and clothes.

- And that's what goes on to this day.

Without us, I don't know what he would have done,

he would have been on public assistance,

and that's not right.

- When people leave jail, it is usually said

that they have paid their debt to society,

but in this case, how on earth can society

pay its debt to James Richardson,

for 20 years of anguish and pain?

(applauding)

- Yes, my question I would like to ask to James,

obviously, the state spent a great deal of time

and monies to keep you in prison,

and feed you and all that sort of stuff,

which is not very happy being in prison,

basically, is there any type of compensation

or restitution that you are receiving?

- Is there any compensation, James?

Do you have a lawsuit, for instance?

- Yes, I have a lawsuit.

- [Geraldo] And how is that going?

Have you filed it?

- We are still working on that case,

suing the state for $35 million.

- [Tim] Lane had different attempts to get him

compensation through lawsuits against the state of Florida

and against the prosecutor and I believe,

none of that ever came to any fruition.

(soft instrumental music)

The Victims of Wrongful Incarceration Act

is what they came up with.

And James was the first person to apply

under that act in the state of Florida.

- So one of the requirements of the statute

that got passed is that you've got to have clean hands,

so you still could not have committed any other felonies,

so it's not just, I didn't do this,

but do you clean hands, okay?

And he did, no other charges, whatever,

but you have to prove that the person is actually innocent.

- So it's on the person who is wrongfully incarcerated

to prove that they were innocent.

The state doesn't have to do anything,

but sit there and say no.

- The statute requires DNA evidence.

Mr. Richardson was convicted in 1968

and so that science, that forensic evidence,

was not in, in wide use at the time.

- [Don] I can't prove he's innocent

because you've got missing evidence, dead witnesses.

- Our findings are that he was probably wrongfully accused.

We will never be able to prove him innocent beyond

and to the exclusion of reasonable doubt,

because of the totally inadequate investigation.

- I just sometimes think that the state,

the state sees these individuals

that have been convicted and imprisoned,

they don't look at them as human,

even when they've done their time,

they've served their sentences, they've served their parole.

You still have to apply to the governor

to get your civil rights reinstated,

your right to vote, it's not automatic,

you have to go through a government bureaucracy

for them to give you the right to vote back.

Why isn't that automatic?

You've paid your debt to society,

but society continues to make you pay.

That's not right.

(engine running)

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- It was only because he could not produce DNA evidence

and he did not have a trial,

a new trial, that he was ineligible.

- So my bill says that when those elements are present,

then, and especially if you were convicted prior to 1980,

then you would qualify to apply for compensation

under Florida's Wrongful Incarceration Statute.

- And that's how they tailored it,

in order for him to be compensated.

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I want him to have, you know, a decent home to live in,

a decent car to drive and where he can go to the store

and buy the groceries he wants

and basically to live out whatever time he's got left

in some degree of comfort.

- It will be the final chapter in putting it behind him,

at the community level.

Finally someone recognizing the injustice that occurred.

It will be the demarcation of past moving forward.

- This can be done.

It may not be done tomorrow,

but we eventually will reach the goal,

and that is to get him compensated.

- This is an opportunity to right

a racial injustice that occurred in the state of Florida

and this gives Florida an opportunity to make amends,

if you will.

And I think that this is the time to do it.

- [Man] Jackson Memorial Hospital

and the work that they get done

and the work that they--

(indistinct chatter)

There are three central, there are three hospitals

in the Jackson, in Miami-Dade.

- He's here with us in the West Gallery,

he is a study in kindness,

in perseverance and in humility.

We are proud to introduce to this chamber,

Mr. James Joseph Richardson.

- [Tim] I don't think everybody voted,

(applauding) but there was no opposition.

- After 21 years in prison, that he didn't deserve,

we've come together as a legislature to recognize

that something very bad happened

in the history of the state of Florida

and we're very proud to help him move on

and have Florida turn the corner

on that dark page in history.

(applauding)

- The state basically gave him an apology,

from the floor of the House and the floor of the Senate.

- You honor us with your presence,

but the pain and the suffering

that you must've gone through is unimaginable.

But we're happy to be here today

at the end of our session having brought

just a little bit of justice back to you, sir.

We welcome you back to Florida,

we thank you for being here today.

- I felt very proud and I felt a little warmness in me.

And I was surprised to hear them say,

we gonna help this man because he was mistreated.

- I think it'll be, for him,

it'll be a lot of weight off his shoulders,

'cause you can tell he still is stressed, to this day.

- [Peter] He's got money to live off of.

He's got something to have a dignified rest of his life.

- Got a chance to maybe get me a home.

I want me a church.

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- This is not a guarantee of compensation

for Mr. Richardson, it is an opportunity for him

to apply and then once he applies,

then he would be eligible for $50 thousand

for every one of the 21 years that he was in prison.

- I don't feel like it's going to be enough anyway.

I've got to pay my lawyer, I've got to pay my doctor bills,

I owe $27 thousand in my medical, doctors

and things like that.

And I'm having a painful feeling about

how I'm gonna pay all of these people

and what I will have left.

I know there ain't enough money to buy a church.

- That money has got to last him the rest of his life,

because he has to sign a release saying,

that neither you nor your wife

nor your relative, anybody, can ever sue the state

or ask for compensation on this matter again.

Period, this is it.

- This money is not for me to say,

that it will make me feel happy

because there ain't nothing in the world

that can make me feel happy,

unless they can give me back what I have lost.

(gentle instrumental music)

- Anyone that read Janet Reno's report

would just be shocked at how this happened

and wonder, how come some of these people

that did this, that hid this evidence

and did all this stuff, why weren't they arrested?

Why weren't they brought to justice?

How come they didn't arrest Frank Schaub or Frank Cline?

- Richard Bernard says that you framed James Richardson.

- So do the attorneys.

Of course, the facts don't bear that out, do they?

- But the attorneys were not the chief of police of Arcadia.

- No.

- Did you frame him? - No.

- It was a horrible travesty and again,

I know I've said this before, it pains me more,

because it was committed in large part

by the prosecution and the prosecutor.

- What is it that really clinched this case?

You said it was a strong case.

- That he had motive, that he had opportunity

and most of all we prove pretty conclusively

that each of these children had been poisoned

by Parathion that had been seeded in their food.

- But anybody could've done that.

I mean, just about about anybody--

- No, not nobody except him.

He was the one that was there.

- [Peter] You get public servants that steal money,

but public servants that steal people's lives

and their time, like that.

It's too bad that they weren't,

that they didn't have to spend the time in jail,

as far as I'm concerned.

- Well, I know legally for us as prosecutors,

we can make mistakes, the law says we get immunity.

- You can't bring a federal civil rights criminal case,

ordinarily, against people because

there's a five-year statute of limitations.

The statute of limitations have run in most states

for the criminal conduct that convicted an innocent

when we find out about it 10, 20, 30 years later, right.

And that's many of our cases, 10, 20, 30 years later.

- I don't even know how you prove

that someone acted with intentional malice

and I'm viewing this as, I know you didn't do it,

but I'm going after you anyway.

- The state is the one that needs to say,

the person we put in that position of power was wrong

and yet, the state wouldn't even want to acknowledge that.

- Should Mr. Schaub have been disbarred?

I don't know.

I don't know that there was intentional knowing conduct,

it's clear that the decision to go forward on this case,

in hindsight, with the information

that they had in their file 21 years later, was clear.

- It was a tragic time, the children were dying,

one right after another,

and we didn't know what the reason was.

He gave us no information that could help us

in any way determine what it was

and he seemed to be conveniently absent.

- So, I think an apology from the people

who did this would have been nice.

That can't happen because they're gone.

(soft piano music)

- Was it intentional we're gonna go

and we're gonna get James Joseph Richardson

if it's the last thing we do?

I think it's a situation where early on,

Sheriff Cline got put in a position

where you got all this media attention,

everybody is upset, you've got seven dead children.

We gotta do something and somebody's got to be arrested.

- [Peter] Sometimes I think that winning

becomes more important than justice

and cognitively people can get into that mindset

and it's very unfortunate.

- [Interviewer] Were you framed, James?

- [James] Yes, I was and I think

that sheriff did that for a reputation.

He did it to build himself up.

- I wish they had done something different in 1967

and James Richardson would have gone through life

as just an anonymous guy like the rest of us.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen.

- [Peter] The South is a beautiful, beautiful place,

it's a very interesting part of the United States.

But there's a lot of colorful characters

and a lot of evil around.

I don't know that something like this could not happen again

but this sort of sets a precedent

for what will happen if it does.

- It's always amazed me,

every time we go through the story of James's case,

that I'm just amazed at how a group of human beings

can do that to another human being,

to have such an impact on almost his entire life.

I can't fathom that.

- And so yeah, we've got to come to grips that,

yeah, there was a wrongful prosecution,

wrongful, probably, conviction,

and when I see that as a prosecutor

and I hope when the other 330 odd prosecutors

who work in this office see stuff like that,

it reminds them of the importance of our oath

and our duties and responsibilities

to make sure that we are following the evidence

wherever it leads and that we're making the right decision,

again, for the right reason.

Because, again, we have the power to destroy people's lives.

(soft piano music)

- Racism takes a long, long time to go away,

it really does, a long, long time to go away.

The only thing that makes it go away is generations

and generations and generations, you know.

And the number of people that were there

on that day in 1967, of course, have died off,

quite a bit, that remember that big, big day

and all those ambulances,

that horrible thing that all these kids died,

there are very few of those people left anymore.

Pretty soon it'll just a be a mark in a history book.

But that history book will also say

that Richardson was exonerated

and was paid X amount of dollars by the state.

It clears his name and throws the onus

back on the government that put him away, wrongly.

- I wish him well and I hope he gets his money

soon enough to be able to use some of it,

to try and do some things to enjoy what's left of his life.

(gentle piano music)

(dramatic piano music)